A group of mining companies and fuel producers calling itself the Methane Awareness Resource Group filed suit in federal court to block circulation and, ultimately, publication of data. Members of Congress supported the industry's case.
By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Cancer Victims’ Attorney
When writing recently about a long-term study that revealed a strong link between on-the-job exposure to diesel exhaust and lung cancer deaths, I mentioned that the data had been suppressed for more than 15 years. I didn’t go into the details of the efforts to keep the truth from workers and general public because I felt it was most important to highlight the researchers conclusion that
if the diesel exhaust/lung cancer relation is causal, the public health burden of the carcinogenicity of inhaled diesel exhaust in workers and in populations of urban areas with high levels of diesel exposure may be substantial.
In short, I wanted to call attention to the reality that railroad employees, truck drivers and people living near rail yards, ports and truck depots face significant risks to their health and lives from breathing in diesel fumes.
But I’d be derelict in my duty as a Virginia (VA) personal injury attorney who has represented dozens of rail workers sickened by exposure to toxic and cancer-causing chemicals on the job if I left the details of how companies and politicians did everything they could to squelch the diesel-cancer link findings. The story closely parallels how the dangers of asbestos — and the toll of mesothelioma and asbestosis — were intentionally denied and concealed for decades, And like the shameful asbestos legacy, attempts to cover up diesel exhaust risks have resulted in thousands, if not millions, of unnecessary illnesses and deaths.
For related info about diesel exhaust fumes, take a look at these articles:
The diesel exhaust data came from a 50-year study of miners called, aptly, the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS). Between 1947 and 1997, federal researchers measured air pollution inside mines and tracked the health of the men and women who worked in the atmospheres saturated with diesel fumes. Analyses of the DEMS data conducted with funding from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health revealed the lung cancer risk to workers most exposed to diesel exhaust. Those analyses were started before 1997, and papers were drafted for peer review as early as 2000.
A group of mining companies and fuel producers calling itself the Methane Awareness Resource Group filed suit in federal court to block circulation and, ultimately, publication of the DEMS papers on the grounds that research findings produced under government contracts are subject to review by members of Congress before being made public. That legal fine point is true, but the review is almost always pro forma, when it is conducted at all.
As an investigative report from the Center for Public Integrity notes, however, MARG not only succeeded in holding up dissemination of the diesel exhaust findings, the group won a judge’s order requiring industry review prior to publication. The 2001 court order kept the DEMS data out of print until 2012, an outcome the mining and fuel companies no doubt desired because they wanted to contest federal regulations on diesel exhaust. The corporations default critique has been that tougher diesel fume exposure standards lacked a scientific basis.
All during the legal proceedings, MARG has been fully supported by Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives. At one point, members of Congress went so far as to file a brief to a court on MARG’s behalf. At other times, congressmen have called on judges to enforce rulings favorable to the industry group.
Now, even with the data from the diesel exhaust study in print, MARG has obliquely threatened the editors and publishers of the Annals of Occupational Hygiene and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute with legal action. As fellow personal injury lawyer Maxwell S. Kennerly observed, however, the industry group doesn’t seem to have any grounds for a lawsuit because it has already compelled researchers to take the unprecedented step of sharing prepublication government data with a nongovernmental entity.
Yes. This is all so much inside baseball. But the details — which I’ve actually skimped on — are important to illustrate the lengths to which companies and their political patrons will go to in order to avoid liability for making employees sick.
Now that the truth about the dangers of diesel fumes is known, with even the New York Times and CBS News reporting on the cancer risks, it’s time to focus on how and why it took so long for the facts to get out. Industries must own up to the risks they require workers to face. When those risks become actual injuries and illnesses, companies must be held liable for compensating employees. This goes for Amtrak, CSX and Norfolk Southern as much as for trucking corporations and mine operators.
EJL
About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.
